Recycling organic kitchen waste with worm baskets

Life.Ecology.Food.
Aug 25, 2017 · 7 min read

Grey Lindley

Earthworms are amazing creatures as well you may know. On top of that they’ve been around for hundreds of millions of years. When I moved to my current home I was blessed to discover an excellent population of red or brandling compost worms – which I quickly put to work in my compost.

I’ve worm farming for a long time now. I used to keep some worms in my kitchen in my flat in a council recycling box – which I thought was rather poetic. It worked well enough as a worm farm – but I did occasionally find escapees who left to find there was no other soil or moisture outside of the box and subsequently died. I was sad about that and tried as much as a I could to make them happy but felt it just isn’t such a great idea keeping them away from a larger system of soil. I also noticed – and I see this on many worm farms – the worms often collect above the soil under the lid on the sides of their container. I’ve always been of the impression that this is a sign the worms are unhappy with their environment and are trying to actually avoid the soil of their home. This bothers me. When I moved to my new home I decided to try and build a better version of worm farm. Introducing worm baskets.

Worm baskets are essentially containers with a firm lid – with only small holes in the lid for air flow – that you bury into the soil of your garden. They are full of holes in their sides underneath the soil surface.

This design allows:

  • Compost worms to self organise – they can come and go at their leisure. I think after hundreds of millions of years they know much better than I do exactly what they like and what they need and this kind of system allows them to just be themselves. As they are free to leave – if you find a large population sticking around you can be sure you are doing the right thing by them.
  • Vermin free kitchen waste disposal. Throwing veg scraps onto a big compost heap is an excellent way of attracting rats and mice. I like rats and mice – but I don’t want to encourage large populations around my house! The design pictured has withstood the thorough investigations of at least one mouse or small rat that dug down the sides but couldn’t get in.
  • This design allows the worm’s products to be used by your current garden’s plants as they can send their roots into the farm and reap the lovely benefits. I’ve observed some Silverbeet do exactly that. They were big Silverbeet.
Worm basket made from plastic pot with snug fitting saucer as lid, Installing a worm basket, Blueberry in pot on top of embedded worm basket

I have been running three of these farms for two years now and they’ve been just great. (I’ve found three is a good working number for my household) They are visually discreet, accessible and the worms appear to love living in them. Also, the worms don’t gather on the sides, which I think is a good sign.

My initial idea was that I would activate a single farm at a time and have them relatively near each other and thought maybe the worms might migrate between them as they wished – but in reality I use all three at the same time to avoid any buildup of waste.

I essentially start a farm by adding a small layer of composted moist soil – maybe 5–10cm then add some worms and fresh scraps onto the soil surface. That’s it.

When feeding compost worms – think about what you would basically be ok with eating – and put the rest into you main compost bin/heap. For example, don’t feed worms loads of citrus peel or onions. Most advice says never do this – but I’ve found they’re fine with it in smaller quantities– as am I – I love citrus peel in small quantities. I also don’t give eggshell or animal products to the worms – only vegetable waste. I have an ongoing ethical dilemma about how much caffeine to give them. They absolutely lurve coffee grounds - but is that the right thing to do? Imagine such a little organism eating that much caffeine – and what if you stop for a while and they go the worm version of cold turkey??

To harvest you can painstakingly separate every worm from the castings and then throw the castings straight into you garden – returning the worms to the basket with a nice new starter layer of composted soil. As the waste hasn’t been through composting process you will get a lot of seeds sprouting from this. That can be a fun way of gardening – but I now prefer to get most of the worms – then move the castings into my main garden composting system – that means I don’t have to get every single worm – which can take ages! – they’ll be fine in their new home. They can find their way back to the baskets if they want.

The only downside with my initial trials was slugs – the lids of my initial builds had large slugable holes in them. Small holes for air in the lids – I mean really small! – definitely make a huge difference and I’ve since seen very few slugs get into them. The hole size used underground is also important for the same reason. Starting the holes two thirds they way down the side – so they are very much underground also helps keep slugs out. Also, my plastic pot worm baskets have a rim at the top. Slugs like living under the rim sometimes – so rimless installations might work better – depending on how much you like slugs.

To build your own with the method I used you need:

  • A plastic plant pot with a lid that will completely seal the top so the only holes or gaps are small air holes you drill in. I bought my pots new from Wilcos (UK) because it just so happened the pot base was an exact fit to the rim when placed on top.
  • A drill with selection of drill bits, or other clever way of making holes in plastic
  • A knife to pare back hanging pieces of plastic. After drilling in this plastic I had lots of quite sharp plastic chads and burrs. I pared them off with a sharp knife – it’s very time consuming but worth it when done as the farms should last for many years. Drilling into firmer plastics may not be such an issue. Drilling into ceramic e.g. Rhubarb forcers isn’t something I’ve tried yet! Apparently you need special drill bits.
Worm basket in spring bee garden with a blueberry on top

After building these and using them for about a year, I discovered the phenomenon of “worm towers” on YouTube. Essentially the same idea but with less finesse and no bottom – I think to be really vermin proof these buried farms need a bottom. The rodent that attacked mine was very industrious and dug deep down looking for an entrance. Also, can I just say – worms don’t like living above ground! Especially in towers! It’s a weird idea in that respect. Though if you want a quick and dirty mostly vermin proof and more unsightly version of a worm basket – a piece of PVC pipe and drill can get you one of these lickety split. I think the narrowness of a PVC pipe is also a downside to this design. You can’t really inspect the farm properly – and half the fun of this is getting to know your worms and being able to monitor their progress and happiness.

The original idea was the whole thing would be ceramic – bit like a wide topped buried Rhubarb forcer – but with lots of holes in the side (and a bottom). I really fancy following through on that idea eventually. I think they could be designed to be an aesthetic addition to any garden bed.

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Life.Ecology.Food.

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Organic, no dig, perennial, ecologically focused sustainable low maintenance experimental forest gardening, meadow gardening and kitchen garden culture

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